Two significant changes in the ways Americans perceive mortgages as illustrated in one paragraph

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A recent piece about mortgages in the United States contained this paragraph:

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The mortgage, the cornerstone of wealth building for generations of Americans, is vanishing. Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association show that Americans are applying for fewer mortgages than they have at any point in the past quarter century, including during the worst of the Great Recession, when the jobless rate was more than twice as high. Since the end of 1999, 96 of the 100 lowest readings of the MBA’s weekly index of new mortgage-loan applications have occurred in the past three years.

These sentences highlight two major changes regarding how Americans view mortgages in the last 80 years (post World War II era):

  1. The expectation that mortgages are available for everyone. This came about in the postwar era due to changes in mortgage terms as well as interest in homeownership. Regarding terms, mortgages became 30 year obligations, lowering the monthly cost for consumers. Regarding homeownership, pent-up housing needs (Great Depression plus World War II) plus an existing American ideology privileging property ownership led to mortgages used for single-family homes. And with the relative economic prosperity of the postwar era, more Americans than ever could access mortgages. This became the norm: follow the societal paths for success and secure a mortgage as a 20-something or 30-something.
  2. The expectation that mortgages serve as wealth building instruments. This has increased in recent decades as property values have risen dramatically in many parts of the United States. Prior to this, homeownership or property ownership was its own end. The owner could do what they wanted with the property. They could participate in local community life as a property owner. They could provide for their household. Now people expect to profit in the long-term off their mortgage: they will pay off interest and some equity and then sell it for more money down the road as they pursue their goals.

The hint in the article above is that pursuing and having mortgages has decreased and might decrease in the future. Does this then change perceptions regarding mortgages? Americans have not always viewed mortgages in the same way in the past and may not do so in the future.

Split housing market illustrated in Miami: ultra-wealthy drive prices up, housing stagnant for everyone else

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Recent real estate activity in Miami highlights a feature of current life in the United States: billionaires are buying up property and driving up prices in that segment of the market while housing has stalled for many other residents.

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The median home price in Miami, at $610,000 in January, was down 7.2 percent from the previous year, with homes sitting on the market for a median of 115 days, according to Redfin. Even the merely luxurious homes, those listed between $10 million and $30 million, are sitting on the market for months. But at the top, a battle is on for the best land that can be had…

Todd Michael Glaser, a Florida developer, likens this era to the Gilded Age, when the country’s wealthiest families, with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Rothschild settled into sprawling “cottages” akin to the estates of the British aristocracy…

When demand is high among buyers with unlimited budgets, prices become almost meaningless, ballooning to whatever sum it takes to persuade a seller to move. “When you’re worth, not even in the billions anymore, but in the hundreds billions, it’s just a rounding error for you,” said Jeff Miller, a Miami luxury real estate agent with Sotheby’s International Realty.

Five years ago, sales of homes over $50 million were nonexistent. In 2025, they represented over 7 percent of the market, by dollar volume, according to Jonathan J. Miller, director of markets at StreetMatrix, a hyperlocal market data site. “It’s not that prices appreciated,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s that prices reset because there was a recalculation as an asset class by the wealthy.”

Those with resources can consume while most people have to watch their budgets. The wealthy can throw large amounts of money around while the general public has to look for good deals. The most desirable real estate keeps going up in value while others struggle to sell their properties and afford decent housing.

These are not new features of American life. (See the 1929 sociological study The Gold Coast and the Slum for a look at these dynamics in Chicago roughly one hundred years ago.) Yet, the contrast seems noteworthy given (1) ongoing housing needs in many metropolitan regions in the United States, (2) an economic system that relies on consumption and luxury goods, and (3) ongoing public and policy discussions about wealth.

Take the housing issue in Miami. How does this activity with expensive properties contrast to housing activity elsewhere? What is being constructed and for whom? What happens to older housing on the market? Can people in the region access good housing at different price points that enable them to live well and pursue opportunities?

Possible link between major music releases and driving deaths

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A recent working paper looked at the possible connection between music releases and traffic fatalities:

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A group of researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School recently issued a working paper reporting an association between the release days of the most-streamed albums and an increase in US traffic fatalities. The authors say the pattern is consistent with smartphone-enabled driver distraction, including the use of in-vehicle phone-mirroring platforms.

“Modern smartphones present new threats to road safety beyond talking and texting, but the real-world effects are difficult to study,” the researchers said in their explanation for performing the study. Fatal traffic accidents and release days for popular streaming albums, the team said, were chosen as an “exogenous event” that “may offer an opportunity to quasi-experimentally study the impact of distraction using observational data.”…

The team used data from the US Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which catalogs all fatal crashes on public US roadways, and compared that to data from Spotify charts, looking specifically at the top 10 albums with the most first-day streams between 2017 and 2022 (Taylor Swift and Drake each appear three times in the top 10, for those curious)…

They adjusted for fixed effects like holidays, the day of the week and week of the year, repeated the analyses to select for infotainment systems and other automobile information, and accounted for driver characteristics including age, the number of people in the car, and involvement of alcohol. The team even conducted multiple “placebo album” falsification tests, running experiments on randomly-selected dates, to be sure they weren’t overlooking something else unknown.

This sounds like an example of a “natural experiment” where researchers can see what happens to driving deaths on Fridays with major music releases and Fridays without them.

Three quick thoughts in response:

  1. I remember when major music releases were on Tuesdays, not Fridays. And when the music was not yet digital, a consumer had to go to a location to buy a physical copy. I was never in any release lines but I definitely went to stores on release day to buy CDs. (Have never done this for records or cassettes.)
  2. How many people enjoy new music in a car versus via ear buds, headphones, and speakers in other settings? A moving vehicle can make it difficult to hear music. The road is noisy. A vehicle makes noise. The car has a certain sound system. In newer vehicles, the listener is streaming music. But driving is better with entertainment. And driving with friends and music can be fun. Driving fast with friends and loud music can feel fun.
  3. What might be a public health response to this? Regulations about screens in cars – making them easier to operate, smaller, less distracting, etc.? Music release days back on Tuesdays or another weekday to avoid the possible connections to weekends? Public safety messages? Promoting the use of driverless vehicles?

Book cover for Every Somewhere Sacred: Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination (out June 16, 2026)

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Ben Norquist and I have a book titled Every Somewhere Sacred: Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination coming out June 16, 2026 with IVP Academic. See the cover below:

Pre-order the book here. Download a free chapter here.

Ben and I have worked on this book for years. We had co-authored an article titled “Christian Colleges in the Locational Wilderness: The Locations of CCCU Institutions” that was published Christian Higher Education in 2021. Ben had done some research into his family’s property with those efforts published as “My land acknowledgement” in Christian Century in November 2023.

By November 2022, we had a working outline of the book and a draft proposal for the project. We were excited about the possibilities of considering land and places from a theological and social science point of view. We agreed there was a need for a book that helped American Christians think about approaches to land and place, to consider what did not work currently or in the past and what could work in the present and future.

Going from our proposal to a full draft took a lot of writing, reading, and conversation. We learned a lot. We got words into documents and then revised them. We tried out ideas with friends and colleagues. We finished the full draft manuscript in July 2024.

This is a bit of the back story of what will be released in full in June. I’ll be sharing more about the book in the coming months ahead of the release.

This writer’s take on how to write: work ahead of deadlines, give yourself time to think

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I have heard lots of descriptions over the years from writers and academics about how to write. What works? What doesn’t? What routine you should follow? And so on. This is often in response to a question from a colleague or student who is curious about the process or is looking for advice. The answers or accounts tend to be idiosyncratic: what works for one particular person and personality. My sense is writers have to figure it out for themselves, trying some different methods and having some flexibility since conditions can be variable.

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If I were asked my tips for writing, I would offer these two pieces of advice:

  1. Work ahead of deadlines. Some writers describe how deadlines inspire them to do great work at the last minute. They need to feel the pressure. I tend to have lots written way before the deadline. If I have a writing project to complete in a month, I will slowly work on it for weeks so that when that deadline is a week to a few days away, the draft is pretty complete. This takes some planning and finding time but my own experience is that it leads to better work. It is also related to #2…
  2. Give yourself time to think as you write. This is another reason I find writing at or very near a deadline does not work as well for me; it limits the time I have to think about what I am writing. Writing is thinking so if I am doing this way ahead of a deadline, the wheels are turning. There is time to explore new paths, consider sources I did not consider before, revise my argument if needed, and revise. I need the time to mull over what I am writing and writing under pressure makes that harder, not easier.

As for other factors that writers often talk about – where do you write? what mood do you need to be in? do you set aside time and give yourself word counts? do you listen to music or need silence? – I find these less important than the two points above. With plenty of lead time and mental room to think, I can write.

Two quotes illustrating negative suburban responses to the idea of the state overriding local zoning

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Some suburban officials expressed concern regarding Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s suggestion that the State of Illinois should be able to override local zoning. Two quotes from a news story provide some of the justification for the suburban argument. Here is the first quote:

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“Zoning is one of the great protectors we have for investment,” he said. “Zoning is not (there) to exclude. Zoning is to protect.”

Suburbanites have invested money into their homes and zoning helps ensure property values increase/do not drop. Suburban residents like single-family homes, in part because of they view them as sources of wealth. They then can see many other land uses near these homes as threats to those values.

The second quote:

“Our local leaders are best positioned to craft solutions tailored to their residents’ needs,” he said.

Suburbanites also like local control. They can create zoning to prompt development that is consistent with what already exists in the community. They can spend local monies on what residents want. They have more control of local spending, rather than letting others further away spend their monies.

At the same time, do the efforts to protect and retain local control mean that suburban communities limit who might live in their community? Zoning for larger lots will tend to drive up housing values. Keeping zoning (and other matters) under local control means local officials can shape local options. If lots of suburban communities follow these logics, this can limit opportunities.

Mapping and regulation needed before self-driving cars can operate in Illinois

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Two big steps need to be taken before Waymo can operate autonomous vehicles in Illinois:

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The self-driving taxi company is deploying about 10 vehicles in Chicago to start mapping the city’s streets — thus “laying the early groundwork” for future operations here — Waymo said Wednesday. 

But for now, the cars will be driven by people. State officials say legislative change is likely needed to give the green light to self-driving cars in Illinois, and Waymo’s Chicago soft launch comes as a battle over the issue is heating up in Springfield…

The mayor’s office confirmed Waymo had notified the city it would be operating here “in order to map streets formations, record geographical data, and better understand driving conditions.” The company assured the city it would not deploy autonomous vehicles in Chicago yet, the mayor’s office said….

Though several legislative attempts last year went nowhere, state lawmakers have filed at least three bills related to autonomous vehicle regulation since January…

I was aware of the need for a regulatory framework. Rules need to be established. Liability needs to be defined. Political negotiations or compromises need to take place. There are regulations from other places can provide direction but there may also be Illinois or Chicago specific concerns.

I was more surprised to hear about the mapping needs. What additional information does Waymo need compared to what is already available? What extra details will be captured? How much information can the mapping gather? How much data does the typical Waymo vehicle have access to while moving around the streets of Chicago?

There are a lot of roadways in Chicago. Driving them all would take less time than running them all. But it will still take some time. Will the mapping be done before the legislative or regulatory activity finishes? Are there multiple waves of data collection?

The article provides no possible dates of when action related to this will finish. Perhaps Chicago will have its driverless cars in a year or a few years. When that happens, it will be with massive amounts of mapping data and clear state (and local?) guidelines.

Limiting through trucks over 5,000 pounds in a residential neighborhood and the weight of passenger vehicles

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I regularly drive past a sign at the beginning of a residential neighborhood that says: “Through trucks over 5000 lbs GVW prohibited.”

I would guess the primary purpose of the sign is to limit trucks from cutting through this residential area. A driver might want to avoid a busy intersection about a half mile from this sign and driving through the neighborhood could be a shortcut. Residents do not want to hear trucks, breath their exhaust, or have to maneuver around them while out and about their neighborhood.

At the same time, the vehicle weight might matter as well. Heavier vehicles put more stress on roads. Having heavy trucks regularly travel on a road will damage the surface more quickly. These are residential roads, not heavy-duty roads that handle tens of thousands of vehicles each day. The roads are meant to funnel drivers from single-family homes to the major roadways that can handle more traffic.

It is hard to get an exact figure quickly but there appears to be plenty of passenger vehicles that are over 5,000 pounds. Pickup trucks and large SUVs can exceed this weight regularly. Suburbanites drive plenty of these vehicles. Some of the homeowners in this neighborhood may have them.

So even as this sign likely is trying to keep trucks off neighborhood streets, it also hints at the increasing weight of passenger vehicles sold in the United States. They have gotten heavier over time. All roadways could be strained more, not just because of trucks.

NFL teams leave cities for suburbs in search of more revenue and tax dollars

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NFL teams keep their city names and go to the suburbs for more money:

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The Arlington Cowboys. East Rutherford Giants and Jets. Inglewood Rams and Chargers. And maybe the Hammond Bears.

Ten NFL teams don’t play in their namesake cities but in their suburbs. If the Chicago Bears go through with one of their proposals for a new stadium — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker acknowledged Friday that the team’s next home is unlikely to rise within Chicago’s city limits — they could wind up in northwest suburban Arlington Heights or just across the Indiana border in Hammond.

But like other NFL teams, they have trademarked their name and would retain their city identity — along with their Chicago “C” and Bears head logos…

The move outside cities, analysts say, is driven largely by the desire for more money from new stadium revenues on larger, cheaper tracts of land, often closer to many season ticket holders, where teams can build surrounding entertainment districts with restaurants, hotels, retail and housing.

This is a classic suburban story: land outside the city is cheaper so a buyer can get more bang for their buck. This is the story often told about single-family homes: take the same home and lot and see the price to build it and buy it drop as you move out from the city through closer suburbs to outer suburbs.

With so much activity in the suburbs already, it is not like a new stadium is isolated. There are plenty of fans and businesses nearby. Americans are used to suburb-to-suburb commutes. The land that is cheaper in the suburbs can then appreciate in value and provide a big return for the football team.

And if suburban communities are willing to offer big tax breaks, this can generate even more revenue for the football teams. There can be a local or national bidding war where suburbs provide extra incentives beyond having cheaper land compared to cities.

Is there a strong counterargument for a football team to stay in a big city? Should they be loyal to the city? Can there land be even more valuable in the long run because of the demand for land in cities? At the moment, the primary thing cities might offer are big tax breaks.

People might get extra interested in these cases as football teams operate in the public eye and can bring together people across a region. But aren’t the teams just acting like all the other businesses that move locations, including going to the suburbs, so they can make more money?

The problem for places trying to hold off on giving tax breaks to corporations: someone else will make an offer

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You are a municipal or state leader who wants to take a stand on not providing tax breaks to corporations regarding land and/or development. You make the case that wealthy firms can pay their own way. You present evidence that tax breaks tend to benefit the companies, not necessarily communities. You say that tax dollars could be used more effectively in other ways.

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This may be a convincing argument to many. But then something happens. Another community or state offers a lot of taxpayer money. They say they will spend tax money to help a company move. They want that company and will pay the money needed to help make it happen. Can a community afford to lose a major actor? Can a local politician be the one who let them get away?

This could happen for a sports team – see what is going on with the Chicago Bears (even before the latest efforts from Indiana). It could happen with the headquarters of a big company – see the offers made for a second Amazon headquarters. It could happen with warehouse facilities or a shopping mall or a residential development.

Unless every body of government refuses to offer tax breaks, someone might jump in. All the places in a region might not offer a break but then someone across state lines offers money or someone in another region jumps in. There is value for organizations staying in place without tax breaks but it is also hard to do so if someone is offering a lot of money and/or savings to locate elsewhere.

This may indeed be the world we live in. Communities and places compete for jobs, resources, and firms. But hopefully the competition does not leave taxpayers paying for decades for minimal local impacts.